I worked around the side of the bluff for a while, keeping in the cover of the trees, then sat down, lit a cigarette to parch up my throat more, and studied it. There was a courtyard in front of the house and what looked like a wellhead to one side. Near this stood a large black saloon car. At a guess I thought it might be a Mercedes. I wished I had provided myself with field glasses. I wished so even more a few moments later because two men—I couldn’t identify them—came out of the house and got into the car. It swung round and came back along the dirt road. For a moment I panicked, wondering if Wilkins and Dawson (or just Dawson) were already in the car and this was the take-off. The road was away to my right. I got up and raced through the trees and came out just above the road in time to see the dust cloud trailing behind the car as it came slowly up the climb towards me. I threw myself down behind a myrtle bush.
The car came by me and I had a clear view of the two men in it. There was no one else. One was Paulet and the other was Duchêne. They went by me and I lay there and let their dust settle on me. At that moment I didn’t realize how true that comment was to be. You should never let anybody’s dust settle on you.
CHAPTER 13
The Door is Closed
Life is full of unpleasant surprises. Half of them, with a little concentrated thought and circumspection, need never arise. But some there is just no way of avoiding unless you are the absolute master of circumstance—which, unfortunately, no man is. Some people, of course, just ask for it because right from the start they are under-equipped. Like Freeman and Pelegrina. It was all very well for Browning to preach that ‘a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ Most of us are short-armed and have weak fingers, and the minds to match. Some of us, to stir up the metaphors a bit, just see only the wood and not the trees. That was me.
But long before I came to give myself this homily, I had had another crisis of thought. Seeing Duchêne and Paulet motoring away down the road, chatting away and smoking, Duchêne still favouring his Swedish cigar jobs, gave the feeling that clearly they were not evacuating the villa . . . certainly not for some hours. Dawson, certainly, and, I prayed, Wilkins too, would be there. Well guarded. But I had a dirty feeling that Duchêne and Paulet might be on their way to San Antonio—maybe because they hadn’t had any message from Mimo confirming he had wiped out Freeman and Pelegrina, or maybe alarmed because he had not returned. I had a lot of thoughts along these lines and none of them were very comforting. It all boiled down to what I should do. I could either go ahead to the villa and do a one-man rescuing job against whatever odds there were there, or I could go back and get Olaf and we could tackle it together, or I could go back and rely on Manston arriving before nightfall. He mightn’t be able to get here himself but he would certainly have all the weight in the world to get Madrid on the phone and have the Spanish police in Ibiza and San Antonio under instructions in a very short time. In fact that was what he would have to do. Unless something went wrong between Sutcliffe and the Prime Minister and a change of policy was vetoed. My interest was Wilkins, then Dawson. What was the best thing to do? In the end I decided to go back, get Olaf and go to the Spanish police. If they hadn’t received instructions I hoped that, with José as interpreter, and with a backing from the British Consul, I could get some action within the next six hours. I still think it was the right decision. In fact it was. But it didn’t turn out like that. That’s what I mean about life being full of unpleasant surprises. Seeing Paulet and Duchêne go by together, I should—Browning again—have been ‘stung by the splendour of a sudden thought’. I was just stung.
I went back to the van, hidden in the scrub off the road, determined in my mind what to do. I got in, mopped my sweating face with my handkerchief, and then half-twisted to get my hand in my trouser pocket for Mimo’s keys. The movement made me cock my head to one side so that I could see, sitting in the shadowed back of the van, Francois Paulet. He had a Colt.45 levelled at me, and he was smiling.
I said, ‘Hell!’
He reached over with his free hand and took my Browning from the pocket of my jacket which I had slung over the back of the spare seat. At that moment I saw Duchêne coming down through the pines. He, too, was carrying a gun.
Sadness in his voice, but a twinkle in his eye, Paulet said, ‘It is a pity that one
